Legal practitioners in Anambra State have been admonished to uphold the ethical standard for legal practice amidst increasing corruption tendencies in the profession.
The Rule of Law and Anti Corruption, (RoLAC) Anti Corruption Programme Manager, Mr Emmanuel Uche, made the appeal in Awka at a two-day capacity building workshop for members of the Nigerian Bar Association in Anambra State and members of the Anambra State Justice Sector Reform Team.
Uche, while lamenting that the entire system was rotten and compromised to an extant that none wants to comply with the laws, said the workshop decided to revisit the ethical provisions for the legal practice due to the fact that lawyers operate within a corrupt environment.
“This event seeks to improve the understanding of the members of the bar of the ethical provisions and the demands of their profession as lawyers. It does not matter how many laws we have in place, if the people don’t imbibe proper ethics, it will defeat the whole essence of access to justice, which is about fairness, equity and fair play.
“In law, you become guilty of an offence when you breach the rights of somebody else, but in ethics, merely thinking of breaching that right makes you guilty already because ethically, you couldn’t be thinking that way,” he stated.
According to him, the outcome of the meeting was to come up with recommendations and initiatives that can help protect legal luminaries, give them a voice, and to help them navigate better ways to keep to those ethics.
“A lot of them are in ultra vires, a lot of them are already in error, already contravening the code of ethics without knowing. And before you know it, somebody thinks he is acting innocently and is going into error and they could be de-robbed. With this, we will hope to see that coming back afterwards, people will have an NBA that better understands the challenges they face in order to practice the legal profession. Therefore, an informed NBA body would have the greater capacity to make policies and put initiatives in place in order to protect its members.
“And we are hoping that we will be able to see behavioural change, to see how people’s value system begins to reflect the ethos of the profession. Yes someone will say you know it’s actually the judges are the corrupt people that sell justice. The truth is that without the demand, there would hardly be supply. So, there is always the demand and supply side of it. We’ll provide the same training to improve the capacity of judicial officers but this is targeted at the members of the bar. And you will agree with me, the bar is the mother of the bench. So if the bar gets it right, then the bar will become the good stock from where the bench will be fed,” Uche added.
A Resource Person, Dr Cephas Lerewolu, while urging legal practitioners to be conscious of what they were and the impact of their conduct on the society, urged them to ensuring that justice is always served no matter who is involved.
In their various contributions, some of the participants, a lawyer, Mr Godwin Madubuko; Vice Chairman of NBA Onitsha Branch, Mrs Amaka Uzoegbu; and Mrs Juliet Amasiatu, described the programme as timely and capable of reawakening the consciousness of lawyers to remain ethically sound.
